"If you don't eat your meat..."

"... you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat?!?"

Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home. Not enough members were willing to take the political risk just five weeks before an election.

"No" votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill.
...
The legislation the administration promoted would have allowed the government to buy bad mortgages and other rotten assets held by troubled banks and financial institutions. Getting those debts off their books should bolster those companies' balance sheets, making them more inclined to lend and easing one of the biggest choke points in the credit crisis. If the plan worked, the thinking went, it would help lift a major weight off the national economy that is already sputtering.

"If the plan worked"... but for $700 billion, I want more than just a hope if I'm going to be buying properties and assets that the rest of the world is turning their noses up at.

Call me a sadist but I think if this "rescue" program isn't to be repeated, then we'd best let the creators -- the big spenders who got themselves into this mess -- do at least a little sweating and worrying before the big bailout bucks come through from workers like me and you, currently living within our means who never bought into the "greed is good" movement, never thought we could "have it all" and pawn the bill off on others.

Because if there's one thing I'm really not seeing in this current crisis, it's a sense of proportion. I want to see 'em sweat in those crisp white shirts... worry about packing their office belongings into a box and starting over at the bottom.

You tell me: I mean, if our "best and brightest" these last 40 years are all in government and finance, and have already sampled the rewards of hard work without actually producing, and saw fit to take the riskiest of risks, shouldn't there be some shame and stigma associated with the economy tanking? At least let them admit that they failed, and can't support themselves at their accustomed quality of life, without help from the "lessers" like you and me. Otherwise, why not admit that the market is no longer free, some think you only have to accept the consequences of your risks when you win big, and just throw a big bailout every few years or so?

"How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" Deal with it.